Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) technology is common today in larger medical institutions worldwide, and has led to huge benefits in the practice of medicine. A significant factor impeding further increased use of this versatile imaging technology is the typically high cost of both purchase and maintenance of MRI systems.
The costs associated with the design and manufacture of such systems are due mainly to the need to generate large and very homogeneous static magnetic fields. Such large static fields are currently required to obtain high image quality and resolution. Additional cost is associated with the need to electronically generate gradient fields for imaging with such systems.
The benefits of MRI would be further increased if higher performance systems were available. However, the conventional approach of increasing performance by using even higher static magnetic fields is prohibitively expensive, and does not work in many cases due to imaging artifacts that appear at these ultra-high fields.